TOBA TEK SINGH: Teachers of government schools in the district have been deprived of their winter holidays without any overtime allowance for computerising the data of a survey conducted under a Unicef programme aimed at ensuring enrollment of all children.

The survey was conducted by teachers of government schools a few months ago under the Unicef’s universal primary and secondary education programme.

To get the data collected through the survey computerised, the education executive district officer (EDO) has cancelled winter holidays of teachers of selected schools.

An official source told Dawn that although winter holidays would start from December 24, and the teachers attached to 35 data centres (each centre contained data of schools located in two to three union councils) in the district will start working from Dec 22 (today).

The job is expected to be finished till Dec 30.

The source said the schoolteachers engaged for data entry will have to reach these centres on their own, without any overtime allowance.

He said the teachers who already had meager income would have to pay the transport cost from their pocket to do the extra official work.

The source said given the importance of Unicef programme District Coordination Officer Dr Farah Masood had especially written to Fesco chief executive and Jhang superintending engineer and Toba executive engineer to avoid power outages in the 35 high schools where computer laboratories would be used for data entry from Dec 22 to Dec 30.